The Power of a Coherent Life

Three Reasons Why the Heart-Brain Connection Deserves Your Undivided Attention

It’s pretty easy to spot?incoherence?in life:

·??????The political situation …?in just about every country on Earth.

·??????Chaotic financial conditions?(in just about every country …)

·??????Anxiety about climate changes?(in just about every …)

·??????A broken health care system?(in just about …)

·??????Conflict over just about anything?(in just …)

Coherence is much harder to find.?

As Gandhi said,?“We but mirror the world.”

But do we have to?

These days we view Nature with fear because it has become incredibly unpredictable, chaotic, and destructive, and yet when the weather is bright and clear we feel happy and we’re grateful for the?magnificence?of Nature and the feelings of?harmony?it brings.

Harmony. Balance. Order. Efficiency.?

Coherence is…?(technically speaking)

…?a state or situation in which all the parts or ideas fit together well so that they form a united whole.

And it’s opposite further clarifies the meaning:?his story lacked coherence.

Coherence in physics

Coherence jumped to science with the realization that?coherence defines?a set of waves or sources of waves in which the oscillations maintain a fixed relationship to each other.

Say what now?

I’ll explain.

The invention of?lasers?came about after it was discovered that when photons and waves of light achieve this highly ordered?coherent?state -- when “oscillations maintain a fixed relationship” – they produce light that is uncommonly focused and precise while requiring vastly less power than other forms of light.

This coherent light of a laser produced an astounding array of possibilities, from the scanning of QR codes, people and everyday items in shops, warehouses, and security lines, to repairing a retina in the human eye.?

Coherence is efficiency, it’s balance, it’s harmony, and it’s also?power.

Coherence in Physiology and Psychology

In the early 1990s, researchers at the HeartMath Institute began exploring unique properties within the heart which, while known by ancient traditions such as Chinese medicine, were unproven by Western science.?

It was HeartMath that first observed a connection between the rhythmic waves and patterns of the human heart and a person’s emotional state.?

The Heart-Emotion-Coherence Connection

Simply said, the rhythmic waves produced in the heart when a person is experiencing stressful feelings are disordered and unpredictable.?Incoherent?is the appropriate term to describe these wave forms. They exist inside of you every time you’re upset, frustrated, nervous or angry.

However, when a person is experiencing warm feelings of appreciation, joy, compassion or peace, the heart rhythm waves become remarkably ordered and predictable.?

Coherent?is the perfect term to describe these waves.?Notice how in the image below the boxes to the right of each graph note how either incoherence or coherence are created in the brain, depending on the wave pattern produced in the heart.

Further, HeartMath discovered that virtually anyone can be trained to switch from incoherent heart waves to coherent heart waves, producing significant benefits to your entire brain-body-emotion system.

Less stress, more mental clarity, enhanced energy, deeper relaxation, better sleep.?

A coherent system is balanced, flexible, and strong.

An incoherent system wears out and breaks down.

This discovery was profound.

As the dominant rhythmic, electrical, and magnetic generator in the body, the heart was now being understood as far more than a pump. Now, it was learned that the heart’s rhythmic patterns could be either extremely coherent – at certain times and moods – or extremely incoherent – at other times and other moods.?

The entire brain and every cell in the body are impacted by the rhythmic waves produced by the heart, which in turn are heavily influenced by our emotions.

Further it was now understood that the?heart and brain have dynamic two-way communication?so whatever is happening in the heart immediately affects brain function in specific areas of the brain associated with?decision-making, problem-solving, creativity and physical coordination.?

To be clear, the more coherent is your heart, the more coherent, effective and efficient your brain will also be.

The heart produces an electrical signal that is 40-60 times more powerful than the electrical signal produced by the brain.?

When the heart is coherent, the brain entrains to that.?

When the heart is incoherent, the brain is receiving incoherent information so it has a much harder time of managing the vast array of tasks and intelligence it is designed for.?

Mistakes arise, energy is wasted.

Heart-Brain Coherence

Whether or not you’d ever heard the term “heart-brain coherence”, at face value it sounds like it sounds like it’s a good idea for everyone.?

That’s correct.

Thanks to authors like Dr Joe Dispenza, Dr Bruce Lipton, Tony Robbins and the originator of the research, HeartMath Institute, you could say?#heartbraincoherence?is trending.

Do you need proven, scientifically-validated tools for your mental health — less anxiety, less worry, less reactivity, better listening, better sleep, more energy?

Are you concerned about chronic health conditions in your family?

Have you noticed any memory issues, difficulty focusing, brain fog?

Have you experienced a decline in your energy, vitality, or focus, especially since COVID?

Here are three reasons why you should care, why you should study it, and why you should learn to?practice the state of heart-brain coherence?in order to enhance literally every aspect of your life.

1.?????Your body?is the only one you’ll ever have. (FYI: It’s not getting any younger.)

Training your body to develop the coherent state is easier and more satisfying than it may seem. In fact, our bodies function best when there is coherence among the systems.?

That is their preferred state.?

It feels good.?

It’s efficient.?

We have more power and clarity available to us.?

Life tends to work much better.

HeartMath Institute?scientists discovered that the human body vacillates between periods of coherence when you feel at your best, you’re healthy, you’re clear and creative, your energy is high, and you feel alive, and times of incoherence when your energy is low, you’re stressed and distracted, your decision-making is poor and your sleep is inadequate.

It was discovered that all people have the capacity to create an?internal state of coherence?like a laser, instead of walking around like a regular light bulb that’s burning out.

Ever feel like an old bulb that needs replacing?

By learning to create the coherent state on demand, all your bodily systems have the opportunity to function at a higher level of efficiency, alignment and integration.?

More than 400 peer review studies have been conducted on the heart coherence methodologies and shown significant?results.?

Want to slow or even reverse aging? Learning to produce coherence in your heart and brain is a powerful place to begin.

2.?????An incoherent work life may be the biggest source of stress as well as the biggest accelerator of your aging process:?

At the HeartMath organizations* we constantly reflected on how?coherent?and efficient were our internal communication processes, how smooth and?coherent?were our meetings, how aligned and “coherent” were our performance goals and reviews, how?coherent?were our actions with external partners, with customers and with colleagues.

But it all started with us as?individuals.

I’m proud to say that while I was CEO and for three years consecutively — 2008, 2009, and 2010 – HeartMath was honored as one of the?Top 50 Best Places to Work in the Bay Area.?

3.?????You sense a change in career?or leaving the 9-5 corporate world?may be needed to regain that spark you used to have.?

You may be reading this because of a nagging feeling that your life both professionally and personally could be much, much better.

Perhaps you’ve reached that coveted “C-suite” or Founder position and discovered just how lonely and overwhelming it can actually be!?

Perhaps you realize that the skill or talents?that got you here?— sales, operations, business development, marketing, etc. — are not enough to?keep you here.

You’re entertaining thoughts of “will I flame out too?”

“Was this a terrible idea to risk everything for my great idea?”

“If I share with other leaders the challenges I’m facing, will I appear weak and ineffective?”

The capacity to create internal coherence personally and to create coherence, harmony, collaboration — a “we’re all in this together” mindset — is crucial for leaders now and in the future.

We wrote about this in an article published twice in the Harvard Business Review, first in 2003 and again in 2015. The article is titled "Pull the Plug on Stress" and features how the HeartMath system of research-based tools can be valuable in all aspects of a leader's life: job performance, motivation of others, health and well-being, home life and relationships.

In future issues I’ll break down these Three Reasons for learning heart-brain coherence, provide more tips, techniques, and advanced tools for developing it, and discuss an array of topics to build the?Future You.

I’ll also share how the tools and mindset of heart-brain coherence helped me recover recently from a second COVID infection.

In the meantime, feel free to?learn about 1-1 Heart Coherence Training.

You can also explore?Executive Coaching – The Coherence Mentorship here.

If you enjoyed this issue of my newsletter, please leave a comment, subscribe to the Future You newsletter, and share in your network.

Gratefully

Bruce